"Junior Dos Santos Was Never The Same After The Cain Trilogy"...

Miokink026

Miokink026

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As a massive JDS fan, this is the most annoying popular opinion. So many people regurgitate this line and have zero idea what they're taking about. They see clips of the fights and the aftermath then look at his record and immediately assume JDS fell off. This is extremely disrespectful and dead wrong.

Tony Ferguson accumulated damage for over a decade before the war with Justin, which was the final straw. Chuck was an iron chinned monster spanning entire eras before the accumulated damage from multiple wars finally caught up with him. JDS isn't some fragile little boy who had a accident and can't play ball anymore. He was relatively unscathed before the Cain wars and you think he could go from fresh fighter to past his prime just like that? How weak do you think he is?

Good thing we can easily see that this belief is completely wrong. Immediately after the second Cain fight he went to war with Stipe and his cardio, his speed, his power, his durability... he looked truly amazing there against a very dangerous opponent.

As for his record, Junior is a dynamic, heavy handed fencing type boxer with great grappling and takedown defense. Before the Cain trilogy his best opponents were
  • old Cro Cop
  • still green in striking Werdum
  • powerful but slow Roy Nelson
  • Gonzaga
  • the always dangerous Shane Carwin
  • BJJ specialist Frank Mir
Not saying they're not good wins. Werdum and Mir were dangerous but JDS's elite grappling defense was good enough to keep it on the feet. They are all good wins and dangerous men but JDS is JDS; he was just better than them or his abilities countered their styles.

After Cain, who did he lose to?
  • Alistair Overeem
  • Champion Stipe Miocic
These days it's clear he's a shadow of the man he used to be, but his decline did NOT start immediately after Cain had his hand raised in their third fight. What's more, although JDS is far weaker now than he used to be he's still a top 15 UFC HW who only lost to the best. Even now he has a chance of becoming champion in any organization outside the UFC. Unless of course, the four straight losses deteriorated his chin too much but we don't know that.
  • ONE: Arjan Bhullar. JDS destroys him.
  • Bellator: Valentin Moldavski: great fight but IMO JDS is better on the feet and Moldavski wouldn't be able to get it to the ground
  • PFL: Philipe Lins won one. If JDS enters, he'd be a huge favorite.
 
I think his chin definitely deteriorated after that fight. But skill-wise, I didn't ever think he looked all that worse right after the Cain trilogy. I do suppose it's likely that the Cain fights ended up impacting him later on, leading him to decline earlier than he might have done without those fights having happened, but I think you're right that there wasn't an immediate impact on anything aside from maybe his chin.
 
Miokink026 said:
As a massive JDS fan, this is the most annoying popular opinion. So many people regurgitate this line and have zero idea what they're taking about. They see clips of the fights and the aftermath then look at his record and immediately assume JDS fell off. This is extremely disrespectful and dead wrong.

Tony Ferguson accumulated damage for over a decade before the war with Justin, which was the final straw. Chuck was an iron chinned monster spanning entire eras before the accumulated damage from multiple wars finally caught up with him. JDS isn't some fragile little boy who had a accident and can't play ball anymore. He was relatively unscathed before the Cain wars and you think he could go from fresh fighter to past his prime just like that? How weak do you think he is?

Good thing we can easily see that this belief is completely wrong. Immediately after the second Cain fight he went to war with Stipe and his cardio, his speed, his power, his durability... he looked truly amazing there against a very dangerous opponent.

As for his record, Junior is a dynamic, heavy handed fencing type boxer with great grappling and takedown defense. Before the Cain trilogy his best opponents were
  • old Cro Cop
  • still green in striking Werdum
  • powerful but slow Roy Nelson
  • Gonzaga
  • the always dangerous Shane Carwin
  • BJJ specialist Frank Mir
Not saying they're not good wins. Werdum and Mir were dangerous but JDS's elite grappling defense was good enough to keep it on the feet. They are all good wins and dangerous men but JDS is JDS; he was just better than them or his abilities countered their styles.

After Cain, who did he lose to?
  • Alistair Overeem
  • Champion Stipe Miocic
These days it's clear he's a shadow of the man he used to be, but his decline did NOT start immediately after Cain had his hand raised in their third fight. What's more, although JDS is far weaker now than he used to be he's still a top 15 UFC HW who only lost to the best. Even now he has a chance of becoming champion in any organization outside the UFC. Unless of course, the four straight losses deteriorated his chin too much but we don't know that.
  • ONE: Arjan Bhullar. JDS destroys him.
  • Bellator: Valentin Moldavski: great fight but IMO JDS is better on the feet and Moldavski wouldn't be able to get it to the ground
  • PFL: Philipe Lins won one. If JDS enters, he'd be a huge favorite.
Click to expand...

I would say its more complex than JDS just being shot as soon as Cain beat him, I would say he lost some confidence after that but probably the biggest factor was that fighters knew what his weakness was, everyone was trying to push him back to the cage and unload on him ala Cain.

The really serious decline I think became noteble from the Stipe rematch onwards, a decline in chin and willingness to take punishment, a significant loss of speed and sloppier technique.

ragreynolds said:
I think his chin definitely deteriorated after that fight. But skill-wise, I didn't ever think he looked all that worse right after the Cain trilogy. I do suppose it's likely that the Cain fights ended up impacting him later on, leading him to decline earlier than he might have done without those fights having happened, but I think you're right that there wasn't an immediate impact on anything aside from maybe his chin.
Click to expand...

I suspect so, like Nog's beatings vs Sapp and Fedor they didnt impact him at the time but probably were part of the reason he dropped off at a younger age latter.
 
Agree.

I remember him looking pretty good vs Rothwell (vintage JDS IMO) Ivanov and Lewis.

His worst lost is getting TKOed on the feet by Curtis.. but no shame in getting knocked by Ngannou, Gane or Roz.
 
I strongly disagree.
Not everyone responds to damage the same way. One fighter might be okay going through wars over and over again and others might be toast after one tough beating.

I also kind of think you're missing the argument of the initial claim; it's not that he magically left his prime in the sense that he lost his attributes, it's more of a psychological thing.
The beating was so bad on him 2xs in a row that it mentally fucked him up.
I don't have the stats on hand to back this up, but purely from the eye test and his up and down record JDS went from being a super confident striker to being much more tentative.
That's one of the tell-tale signs of a fighter being past it, having an unwillingness to throw.

He did have some good wins after Cain , like Mark Hunt and Derrick Lewis, but he was very clearly more aggressive and accurate pre-Cain.

Side Tangent: Cain is the most overrated fighter in the UFCs history. His resumé is nothing spectacular at all and it's harious to me when people include him in HW GOAT conversations.
 
JustBleed69 said:
I strongly disagree.
Not everyone responds to damage the same way. One fighter might be okay going through wars over and over again and others might be toast after one tough beating.

I also kind of think you're missing the argument of the initial claim; it's not that he magically left his prime in the sense that he lost his attributes, it's more of a psychological thing.
The beating was so bad on him 2xs in a row that it mentally fucked him up.
I don't have the stats on hand to back this up, but purely from the eye test and his up and down record JDS went from being a super confident striker to being much more tentative.
That's one of the tell-tale signs of a fighter being past it, having an unwillingness to throw.

He did have some good wins after Cain , like Mark Hunt and Derrick Lewis, but he was very clearly more aggressive and accurate pre-Cain.

Side Tangent: Cain is the most overrated fighter in the UFCs history. His resumé is nothing spectacular at all and it's harious to me when people include him in HW GOAT conversations.
Click to expand...
Your tangent cost you any credibility you had.
 
Competition is just miles better than what it used to be. The game surpassed him, like most fighters from his era.. like 99% of them.
 
He still beat Miocic after the Cain fights and I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. After that his chin was clearly not the same. Prime JDS ate bombs for lunch.

The real key to Junior's career is the Mark Hunt fight. He dominated and got a great finish but the writing was on the wall. He was still backing up in a straight line and letting Mark trap him against the side of the octagon and land bombs. It was clear that he hadn't learned or changed anything significant about how he fought and that Cain would beat him again.
 
Miokink026 said:
As a massive JDS fan, this is the most annoying popular opinion. So many people regurgitate this line and have zero idea what they're taking about. They see clips of the fights and the aftermath then look at his record and immediately assume JDS fell off. This is extremely disrespectful and dead wrong.

Tony Ferguson accumulated damage for over a decade before the war with Justin, which was the final straw. Chuck was an iron chinned monster spanning entire eras before the accumulated damage from multiple wars finally caught up with him. JDS isn't some fragile little boy who had a accident and can't play ball anymore. He was relatively unscathed before the Cain wars and you think he could go from fresh fighter to past his prime just like that? How weak do you think he is?

Good thing we can easily see that this belief is completely wrong. Immediately after the second Cain fight he went to war with Stipe and his cardio, his speed, his power, his durability... he looked truly amazing there against a very dangerous opponent.

As for his record, Junior is a dynamic, heavy handed fencing type boxer with great grappling and takedown defense. Before the Cain trilogy his best opponents were
  • old Cro Cop
  • still green in striking Werdum
  • powerful but slow Roy Nelson
  • Gonzaga
  • the always dangerous Shane Carwin
  • BJJ specialist Frank Mir
Not saying they're not good wins. Werdum and Mir were dangerous but JDS's elite grappling defense was good enough to keep it on the feet. They are all good wins and dangerous men but JDS is JDS; he was just better than them or his abilities countered their styles.

After Cain, who did he lose to?
  • Alistair Overeem
  • Champion Stipe Miocic
These days it's clear he's a shadow of the man he used to be, but his decline did NOT start immediately after Cain had his hand raised in their third fight. What's more, although JDS is far weaker now than he used to be he's still a top 15 UFC HW who only lost to the best. Even now he has a chance of becoming champion in any organization outside the UFC. Unless of course, the four straight losses deteriorated his chin too much but we don't know that.
  • ONE: Arjan Bhullar. JDS destroys him.
  • Bellator: Valentin Moldavski: great fight but IMO JDS is better on the feet and Moldavski wouldn't be able to get it to the ground
  • PFL: Philipe Lins won one. If JDS enters, he'd be a huge favorite.
Click to expand...
jds is my favorite hw. he wasnt the same. good enough to win at an elite level yes, but he was not quite the same. he never fought going forward again, he almost always let the opponent take the center. he went from a calculated aggressive boxer with heavy hands to a distance fighter that relinquished the center of the cage alot more than than ever before.

look at his alistar fight. there was a point in time where JDS would have walked alistar down. im not saying that means he wins dont get that confused, but he would never have stood on the outside the way he did in that fight. his entire game changed even when facing opponents with minimal or less grappling skill than himself
 
Miokink026 said:
but his decline did NOT start immediately after Cain had his hand raised in their third fight.
Click to expand...
The decline in JDS' confidence and aggressiveness were immediately noticeable after the last Velasquez fight.

Miokink026 said:
What's more, although JDS is far weaker now than he used to be he's still a top 15 UFC HW who only lost to the best.
Click to expand...
That says more about how badly the division has deteriorated than it does about JDS.
 
TS makes good points, no doubt. But....you can use numbers to make an alternative argument.

JDS won 10 straight, 16 of 18, before the final Cain fight. He was not fighting bums.

JDS lost 6 of his next 11 fights after the Cain fight. Two of these wins came against guys outside the top 10.

I like JDS, he is tough as hell, but you could argue that the final two Cain fights may have shook his confidence and maybe damaged his chin. Honestly, the last Cain fight was hard to watch; JDS took way too many shots.
 
NoContest said:
He still beat Miocic after the Cain fights and I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. After that his chin was clearly not the same. Prime JDS ate bombs for lunch.

The real key to Junior's career is the Mark Hunt fight. He dominated and got a great finish but the writing was on the wall. He was still backing up in a straight line and letting Mark trap him against the side of the octagon and land bombs. It was clear that he hadn't learned or changed anything significant about how he fought and that Cain would beat him again.
Click to expand...
This is a very reasonable opinion. He ate bombs from Stipe for 5 rounds and was fine. If anything, the Cain trilogy and the Stipe fight was what ruined him. Neglecting to mention Stipe is kinda disrespectful to him as well.
acannxr said:
The decline in JDS' confidence and aggressiveness were immediately noticeable after the last Velasquez fight.


That says more about how badly the division has deteriorated than it does about JDS.
Click to expand...
In what way did his confidence waver when he was fighting Miocic and trading bombs?
 
The funny thing is, after the 3rd JDS fight, Cain lost to Werdum, beat Browne, then lost to Ngannou and that's it. Just 3 fights total going 1-2. Meanwhile, JDS fought another 11 times and picked up wins over Stipe, Lewis, Rothwell and Tuivasa.
 
Cain beat the life out of jds and he was never the same again. I almost quit watching mma after that brutal extended and unessesary mauling. It made me sick to watch that fight as the towel should have been thrown in long before that fight ended. It was one of the saddest things ive ever seen.

JDS will suffer permanent long term damage from that fight alone. Im sure it took years off of his life too. It was just terrible.
 
TL;DR (all of it), Stipe also took years of JDS life, even if he somehow lost that decision.

PS: Is JDS doing pro wrestling now? I saw a clip on Morning Kombat some days ago.
 
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